Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I'm curious as to how others handle the issue of letting someone who was involved in abuse back into their lives. It's something I'm struggling with in a few ways.

Backstory. Long. Trigger warning: psychiatric medical abuse.


So, long story short, Mom and me, we have some trust issues, and I trust most doctors - especially psych docs, but really any kind of doctor - about as far as I could spit a rat.

My relationship with Mom over the last few years has been spotty at best. We haven't been Officially Not Speaking, but we aren't in regular contact; we exchange emails a few times a year, mostly. She's expressed an interest in having more of a relationship, recently - her father passing away last summer seems to have been the trigger for that - but she hasn't actually shown herself to be much more trustworthy or respectful than she was when I was a teenager. She's getting better at the small stuff, but trusting her to do anything that's actually inconvenient is still unwise, and the biggest problem I have with her is that we can't talk about the things that are problematic in our relationship. I've given up on trying to talk to her about our history - that just results in withdrawal, fake apologies, and irritated questioning about why I can't just let the past be in the past. (Gee, because I don't trust you not to try to put that kind of pressure on me again. And because I'd kind of like you to be able to see that I've never been the big scary monster that you always thought I was.) I do think it's important to be able to talk to her about current and recent issues, though, and those conversations don't go anywhere either. But on the other hand, she is doing better with the small stuff... and with me living in a completely different state now, it's not like it's a matter of personal safety, much... so I feel kind of obligated to have some kind of contact with her, even though I don't actually want to.

The doctor issue is much simpler, in some ways. I've managed to go about 3 years now without visiting a doctor, and I can in theory limit that contact to just emergencies in the future. Given that diabetes and thyroid problems run in my family, though, it might be a better idea if I started getting checkups on some kind of regular basis. I'm not sure what it'll take for me to feel safe enough to do that, but maybe hearing how others have dealt with the issue of dealing with abusers will give me some ideas that I can translate to that situation. (I have the idea that I'm going to write a letter... "Dear Doc, if you're going to be my Doc, here's what I need from you..." ...but I'm not sure what all needs to be in that letter.)

So: How has anyone else dealt with this issue?

Wow, I definitely haven't dealt with what you have dealt with. But, I have had a really fractured relationship with my mother, and I am going to become a doctor, so maybe I can give you some thoughts?

My mother kicked me out when I was in high school, and I had a really rocky relationship with her for years in which it was clear I was not welcome. For a time, it was much healthier for me to maintain a polite distance from her, and I had enough of a support structure most of the time that I could manage that. We now have a closer relationship, but it's by far not perfect. I still don't feel like a complete member of my family, compared to my brothers. We never, ever resolved our past conflicts. I do not think it could happen. It's been 20 years (good Maude) and she still won't speak to the friends I lived with when she kicked me out, even though their only offense was to take me in.

We have such different narratives about what happened when I was in high school (and I think her version is rooted in a bunch of denial, for example, she tells herself I ran away even though she clearly kicked me out). I know this sounds like it's not actually advice, but do what is best for you. There is no "should". Yes, ideally, we "should" all have great relationships with our families. But, there are toxic people in this world, and people who hurt us. We can try as hard as we can to avoid all of them, but I think that can be a huge trade off and nearly impossible in certain realms. It can definitely help protect us to limit our engagement with them, if possible. But, relationships, especially those with family, are more complicated than an on/off switch.

I have always given myself the option of disengaging with my mother if I felt I needed to. I never told her - I am disengaging from you because our relationship is too toxic to me right now. I just said "Talk to you later, mom", got off the phone, and proceeded to go as long as I needed without contacting her.

As for the doctor thing, I think it is perfectly reasonable for you to come to a health care practitioner with a specific expectation for care, and the right to ask for that type of care, as long as it's reasonable. (I would not go so far to say people should be able to get all care of all types on demand - I believe the health care practitioner has a role in choosing paths of care, too, while honoring proper informed consent and beneficence and autonomy of the patient, but that's a whole 'nother topic I write about from time to time on my blog) Especially since you identify as being on the autism spectrum, I think it would be expected that you would want a practitioner who would understand and accommodate your particular needs. Depending where you are, there are lots of health care practitioners out there. I am also someone who is wary of health care practitioners, but again, my back story isn't as dramatic as yours. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to medical school how diverse my class was. There are definitely douchebags I hope will never touch a human being. But, there more people than I thought would be that I think will be excellent, conscientious physicians. And many people who are in between that will definitely provide competent care, but may not be perfect when it comes to complicated ethical issues, but then again, that's why those are complicated.

Both diabetes and thyroid conditions can have genetic components, but also can just show up. They also can both be insidious, which means you can have them and not know it, because their signs and symptoms can be non specific. And, doctors can miss both easily, so seeing a doctor isn't always the easy answer. I would read up on both, and see how you feel about going to see a practitioner for a base line physical exam with a blood sugar test and a full thyroid panel. Then, if you ever start showing any symptoms of either condition (depression would be one for hypothyroidism, unfortunately) you can get follow up blood work done, and see how you're doing. Both diabetes and thyroid problems can be managed easily in many cases without a lot of practitioner contact. You can even get a glucometer (a blood sugar testing machine) and test your blood sugar at home. Eating a low glycemic diet, IMO, is a good idea for anyone, (pause, take a bite of my eggs) and could make it less likely for you to get and/or have complications from diabetes. You can monitor your basal body temperature if you think you are getting signs of hypothyroidism. I think the more you know about these types of conditions and your own body, the more control you will feel when you do choose to or have to interface with the medical establishment.

By the way, if you (or anyone on here) ever has any basic medical questions that can be answered with research (remember, I am not a licensed practitioner, but I know where to look things up and will give you sources for my info if needed - the stuff above about thyroid and diabetes is pretty basic and could be found on WebMD or anywhere) I would be happy to help.

ETA: Since you also identified as predominantly asexual, I didn't mention reproductive care, but maybe I should have (I am going to be an ob/gyn, so it's a particular interest of mine). The current protocol in the US is to have a pap smear at 18 or 3 years after first heterosexual insertive sex. I don't mean to sound like an after school special, but it only takes one encounter to get pregnant or to have an STD, including HPV, which can lead to cervical cancer (which is screened for by pap smears and now sometimes by an HPV test). I do not think someone who is not sexually active needs a yearly pap smear or birth control, but someone who is even rarely sexually active may want to check in with a clinic of some sort regularly for screening and/or condoms or other birth control.

ETA2: I like the spoiler trick, but haven't ever used it myself. If anyone thinks my posts are too long (um, yeah) and/or triggering, let me know, and I'll try to figure out the spoiler code.

I have no issues with the length of your posts, but since it's so easy, I just wanted to point out that the spoiler tag has been included up along the top of the editor with the buttons for bold, italic, quote, etc. So if you're in the full editor you can just click the spoiler tag button and type whatever you want to say between the tags.

Gods, I don't blame you for mistrusting doctors after your experience.

My advice, on the issue with your mother, is: If you don't want to have a relationship with her, don't. If, however, you still feel like you'd be missing out, then keep contact limited and/or keep your expectations low. I think she might still have potential to hurt you or let you down.

I also think writing a letter to your doctor is a good idea- or maybe, if possible, finding a way to get to know hir before you start making appointments. (I'm not sure if that's possible, though, because I tried to do that with a therapist and found out the only way to meet her is to make an appointment with her.)

Thanks, Llencelyn! I see it.

Gods, Adelene, and here I was thinking I was the only one on the boards to have suffered from psychiatric medical abuse. :S

I don't really know what to say about your mother. If you really feel you must stay in touch, my advice would be to keep her at arm's length. Don't put yourself in a situation where you'll be stuck with her, in person or otherwise, for any length of time. I don't think I'd bother trying to confront her about what she did to you, either -- you know what she did, and that's the only important thing, so why waste your energy trying to convince her or anyone else?

Regarding medical abuse specifically, it sometimes helps me to place more of the blame on the doctors, rather than my parents. Your mother took the medical advice of a professional, and that advice turned out to be utter shit, but your mother never noticed and probably never will because she's one of those people who just trusts professionals that much, or the beliefs they instilled in her about you are just so ingrained by this point, or whatever the case may be. Thinking like that has helped me at least feel a little less betrayed by my parents (although there's certainly plenty else that they and they alone are responsible for) and made me feel just that eensy, eensy bit safer around them. (Which still isn't saying much, but eh.)

I really wasn't intending for this thread to focus on that. It's just the angle that I'm coming at the issue from. And really, other than the two issues I mentioned, I've come out of it okay - I'm very resilient, apparently, which certainly doesn't make what happened any less abusive, but it does make it easier for me to get on with my life now that it's over. The biggest effects it's had on my life are to make me rather wary (since I'm very aware that people don't have to be malicious to be dangerous) and quite passionate about youth rights and ableism.



Hm. I was thinking more along the lines of "If I decline a form of treatment - especially drugs - do not push, at all. If I say no the first time, do not ask me a second time. If I change my mind, I will tell you - and it's reasonably likely that I will change my mind after doing some research, if the thing that you're trying to treat is serious or problematic. If you push a prescription on me, that prescription will not be filled, and that will probably be the last time you see me." and perhaps "Do not touch me without having received explicit permission to do so, for each instance of touching me. 'I'm going to do X now' is not an acceptable request for permission to touch me. Mistakes in this area are acceptable, but if it's regularly disregarded, I will be finding a different doctor." (The former issue has already been an issue. I wound up having a panic attack in the doctor's office last time I had a checkup - and it was the last time I had a checkup because I've been too nervous to try again since - over fucking allergy pills. Blargh.)

Other than the fact that I expect to be a little bit trigger-happy about refusing treatment, I don't think I'll have much problem taking a doctor's advice about types of treatment. (Checking stuff out on WebMD before going along with it is normal, right?)



...I just contemplated disclosing my neurotype to a doctor in RL... I'm going to go gibber in the corner for a while, now. (Not really, but yeah... that's not goona happen.)

Fortunately, I pass well enough as a shy neurotypical that I can generally get away with not doing that. Even more luckily, my medical records were misplaced by my next-to-last doctor, so any new doctor will only know about that part of my history if I tell them.



My friend Three suggested that I could have lab work done without seeing a GP at all, and just have the results sent to me. (I don't have health insurance, so referrals aren't an issue.) That seems like a safe first step, but I still need to figure out how I'm going to handle it if something comes back bad on them.

Regarding depression, I decided a while back that I'm simply not going to see a psych doctor ever again, unless I'm literally physically forced to do so. If I get depressed, looking for medical causes is fine, but if that doesn't pan out, I'm just going to be depressed. Fortunately I don't seem prone to depression except situationaly, and that clears up quickly when I get myself out of the problematic situation.



That's pretty much where I am with her, actually. She definitely believes that professionals are just about infallible. (It doesn't help that she was raised to be very submissive.) 'Never noticed' doesn't fly, with as much noise as I was making about the problems, though - she knew, and chose to trust the professionals over me, even about the state of my own mind, and that's deeply, deeply wrong. It actually parallels (trig: rape)
(By the way, considering forced drugging to be as bad as rape or a type of rape is actually pretty common among people who've experienced it. There are a ridiculous number of parallels between them.)

I am glad you explained your situation more, and hope you didn't mind any of the suggestions I made. If it makes you more comfortable to pass as neurotypical, you definitely know yourself better than I do. I think you should (people should in general) still be able to expect a level of care that makes you comfortable, I just don't know what the best way it would be for you to get it, or if you feel safe enough to go to practitioners for the most part.

You could, theoretically, go to a lab and get a thyroid panel drawn, and do a blood glucose test. Thyroid panels are a little bit harder to interpret than a blood glucose test, and some thyroid conditions can be complicated to control and may need repeated panels and tweaking of medication. Some thyroid conditions can be serious. I am not trying to scare you into seeing a practitioner if you don't want to or don't need to. Most serious thyroid conditions have warning signs. I think blood sugar is more straightforward to monitor and control than thyroid. But, you haven't been diagnosed with either of these problems, and may not ever be.

Ehht. Upon having a flashback or two triggered by your rape parallel, I'm not entirely convinced my parents 'never noticed', either. They certainly knew I hated the medication, as there were many times where I had to be coerced, threatened, or physically forced to take it, especially as I got older. I definitely think they refused to believe that it was causing a lot of the behavioural problems I had, particularly once they started with the anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. No, the pills were just 'not working'. Ugh.

*wince* Sorry about that.